▪ I. telescope, n.
(ˈtɛlɪskəʊp)
Also 7 tellescope.
[ad. It. telescopio or mod.L. telescopium, the former used by Galilei, 1611, the latter by Porta in Italy and by Kepler, 1613, f. Gr. τηλεσκόπ-ος far-seeing, f. τῆλε afar off, at a distance + σκοπ-εῖν to look, -σκοπ-ος looker: see -scope. The earliest English examples are in the L. and It. forms.
Telescopio is frequent in letters of Galilei from 1 Sept. 1611, but does not appear to have been invented by him; J. B. Porta, member of the Roman Academy of the Lincei (to which Galilei also belonged), in a letter assigned to 1613, appears to attribute the name to Prince Cesi, founder and head of the Academy: ‘Telescopium multis ostendi (lubet hoc uti nomine a meo principe reperto)’ (Galilei Opere (1901) XI. 611). Galilei had previously, in 1610–11, used perspicillum, Kepler in 1610 perspicillum, conspicillum, specillum, penicillium.]
1. a. An optical instrument for making distant objects appear nearer and larger, consisting of one or more tubes with an arrangement of lenses, or of one or more mirrors and lenses, by which the rays of light are collected and brought to a focus and the resulting image magnified. Also, an instrument or apparatus that serves the same purpose at other wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Optical telescopes are of two kinds: refracting, in which the image is produced by a lens (the object-glass), and reflecting, in which it is produced by a mirror or speculum; being magnified in each case by a lens or combination of lenses (the eye-piece, q.v.). Large telescopes of both these kinds are used by astronomers. The smaller hand-telescopes are always refracting, and consist of two or more tubes made to slide one within another for convenience of packing into a narrow compass and for adjusting the lenses as required for focusing the image; cf. telescope v. 1.
| [1619 Bainbridge Descr. Late Comet 19 For the more perspicuous distinction whereof I vsed the Telescopium or Trunke-spectacle.] 1648 Boyle Seraph. Love xi. (1663) 59 Galileo's optick Glasses,..one of which Telescopioes, that I remember I saw at Florence. 1657 W. Rand tr. Gassendi's Life Peiresc i. 143 Galilæus, by his newly invented Telescope had discovered certain great and wonderfull sights, concerning the Stars. Ibid., The cause of the effects of the Telescope, or Perspective-Glasse. 1671 Milton P.R. iv. 42 By what strange Parallax or Optic skill Of vision multiplyed through air, or glass Of Telescope. 1774 Mackenzie Maritime Surv. i. iv. 27 Turn the Theodolite till, through the Telescope, you see the Pole A at the vertical Wire. 1837 Dickens Pickw. ii, Mr. Pickwick..with his telescope in his great-coat pocket. 1842 Penny Cycl. XXIV. 163/2 It is..manifest that reflecting telescopes, or optical instruments containing combinations of mirrors and lenses, were known in England before the end of the sixteenth century. 1855 Brewster Newton I. iii. 59 Sir William Herschel..completed in 1789 his gigantic telescope, forty feet in focal length, with a speculum forty-seven and a half inches in diameter! 1865 ‘L. Carroll’ Alice in Wonderland i, Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! 1870 Emerson Soc. & Solit., Art Wks. (Bohn) III. 16 Dollond formed his achromatic telescope on the model of the human eye. 1875 R. Adamson in Encycl. Brit. III. 221/2 He [Roger Bacon] certainly describes a method of constructing a telescope. 1948, etc. [see radio telescope s.v. radio n. 7]. 1970 [see light bucket s.v. light n. 16]. 1974 Physics Bull. May 208/4 A balloon-borne gamma ray telescope, sensitive to photons with energies greater than 50 MeV, has observed several regions of the sky. 1978 Pasachoff & Kutner University Astron. xi. 315 Telescopes in orbit that are sensitive to x-rays have detected a number of strong x-ray sources. |
b. fig. and
allusively.
| 1656 Owen Mortification Sin Wks. 1851 VI. 65 We see through a glass darkly... It is not a telescope that helps us to see things afar off. 1666 J. Fraser Polichron. (S.H.S.) 18 It [History] is indeed that telescope by which we see into distant ages. 1751 Johnson Rambler No. 176. ¶11 Others are furnished by criticism with a telescope. 1885 J. K. Jerome On the Stage p. v, Now that..duty no longer demands that memory should use a telescope. |
c. Astron. (Also in
mod.L. form
Telescopium.) Name (introduced by Lacaille in 1752) of a constellation south of Sagittarius.
2. attrib. and
Comb., as
telescope-maker,
telescope-making,
telescope-stand,
telescope-tube;
telescope-shaped adj.; also applied to various things consisting of or having parts which fit or slide one within another like the tubes of a hand-telescope (
cf. telescopic 4), as
telescope-bag,
telescope-chimney (on a steamboat),
telescope-joint,
telescope-rod,
telescope-table; also
telescope-carp, a monstrous variety of goldfish, having protruding eyes; also called
scarlet-fish;
telescope-driver, a clockwork apparatus for driving an astronomical telescope so as to follow the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies and thus keep the same object continually in the field of view; so
telescope-driving adj.;
telescope-eye, an eye which can be protruded and retracted like a telescope-tube, as in gastropod molluscs;
telescope-fish = telescope-carp;
telescope-fly, a fly of the genus
Diopsis, having the eyes on long stalks;
telescope-shell, the long conical shell with numerous whorls of an Indian gastropod (
Telescopium fuscum);
telescope-sight, a small telescope mounted as a sight upon a firearm or surveying instrument, a telescopic sight;
telescope word chiefly
U.S., a portmanteau word.
| 1885 J. Short Diary 10 Apr. in Kingston (Ontario) Whig-Standard (1973) 11 Apr. 29/3 *Telescope bags packed, in case we have to start for Calgary in a hurry. 1949 W. Faulkner Knight's Gambit (1951) 110 A tremendous old⁓fashioned telescope bag, strapped and bulging, sat on a chair. |
| 1804 Shaw Gen. Zool. V. 211 *Telescope Carp... Scarlet-Carp, with protuberant eyes, all the fins half white. |
| 1874 Sir E. Beckett Clocks & Watches 213 The following plan for a *telescope-driving clock... A still simpler *telescope⁓driver. |
| 1875 Zoologist X. 4501 The so-called ‘*telescope fishes’ are common gold-fishes with double tails and projecting eyes. |
| 1882 Ogilvie, *Telescope-fly, a dipterous insect of the genus Diopsis. |
| 1858 Simmonds Dict. Trade, *Telescope-maker, Telescope-stand. |
| 1881 T. Hardy Let. 13 Dec. (1978) I. 97 The *telescope-making in the catalogue is also useful. 1937 Discovery Nov. 360/1 Amateur telescope-making is a hobby that has found many more enthusiasts in the United States than in the British Isles. |
| 1891 C. MacEwen 3 Women in Boat 73 We began to fish. We had three little common Japanese *telescope-rods. |
| 1867 Latham Black & White 76 In the *telescope-shaped jacketed guns. |
| 1753 Chambers Cycl. Supp. App., *Telescope-shell, the English name of a species of turbo, of a conic figure, with plane, striated, and very numerous spires. |
| 1715 tr. Gregory's Astron. (1726) I. 284 Instruments..furnished with *Telescope Sights. |
| 1869 C. L. Eastlake Hints on Househ. Taste (ed. 2) iii. 67 What is commonly called a ‘*telescope’ table, or one which can be pulled out to twice its usual length, and, by the addition of extra leaves in its middle, accommodates twice the usual number of diners. 1881 Young Ev. Man his own Mechanic §763 A telescope-table must be studied in all its parts and movements before any attempt can be made to mend or make one. |
| 1909 Cent. Dict. Suppl., *Telescope-word. 1933 H. Wentworth Blends in Eng. 3 Telescope word has also been applied to one formed from the first syllables of words. 1977 Lebende Sprachen XXII. 9/1 A rather special form of collocation are the so-called blends or telescope words. |
▪ II. ˈtelescope, v. [f. prec. n.] 1. a. trans. To force or drive one into another (or into something else) after the manner of the sliding tubes of a hand-telescope: usually said in reference to railway carriages in a collision. Also
fig. to combine, compress, or condense (a number of things)
into a more compact or concise form; to combine or conflate (several things, or one thing
with another); to shorten by compression.
| 1872 Amer. R.R. Jrnl. 20 Apr. 493 Telescoping..car raised up and sent through the advancing car, after the manner of a closing telescope. 1876 World V. No. 112. 14 No one has ever yet been killed in a Pullman, in which, says its inventor, you can never be ‘telescoped’. 1879 Times 11 Oct. 5/6 A Pacific express train..ran into a locomotive, completely telescoping the baggage wagons of the express. 1890 Clark Russell Ocean Trag. II. xviii. 101 He closed the glass with a ringing of the tubes as he telescoped them. |
| fig. 1894 Cornh. Mag. Mar. 289 The stages which occupy the broom for the whole of its lifetime are telescoped, as it were, in the gorse into the first three weeks. 1909 Expositor July 57 It would then be just possible that St. John had to this slight extent ‘telescoped’ the two accounts together. 1911 Beerbohm Zuleika Dobson xvi. 243, I telescoped my toilet and came rushing round to you. 1953 Essays in Criticism III. 57 Shelley's mind..has telescoped the shattered autumn landscape with a stormy Heaven and Ocean. 1958 Listener 2 Jan. 13/2 Our own effort at telescoping education is a biological retrogressive step. 1961 Amer. Speech XXXVI. 162 Generalizing over all such cases, the linguist can telescope them into one single, economical rule of agreement as a formal requirement for well-formed English sentences. 1965 Listener 20 May 756/1 The complex is worked out in the book with poetry and psychological insight... The adaptation had to telescope something of this. 1978 Jrnl. R. Soc. Arts Dec. 29/2 And so, telescoping time, I now leap from 1909..to 6th October 1927. |
b. intr. To slide, run, or be driven one into another (or into something else); to have its parts made to slide in this manner (see
quot. 1882,
s.v. telescoping below); to collapse so that its parts fall into one another (
quot. 1905).
| 1877 Knight Dict. Mech. 2524/2 Two screws.., one working within the other, and both sinking or telescoping within the base. 1877 O. W. Holmes How not to settle it 92 They telescoped like cars in railroad smashes. 1881 Metal World No. 19. 295 The proposals to stop a train by applying the power on the locomotive, which..would cause the carriages to ‘telescope’. 1905 Bond Gothic Archit. 594 Chichester central tower telescoped within the memory of man. |
2. trans. To make into or use as a telescope.
| 1861 [see telescoped below]. 1889 Macm. Mag. Apr. 419/1 Telescoping my hand, [I] sent a long searching look into the length of the dingy shadow. |
Hence
ˈtelescoped (
-skəʊpt)
ppl. a.;
ˈtelescoping vbl. n. and ppl. a.| 1861 Thornbury Turner (1862) II. 170 note, Looking through his telescoped hand. 1867 Commercial & Financial Chron. V. 6/2 There are two principal dangers which have to be guarded against—the ‘telescoping’ of cars into each other in case of collision [etc.]. 1882 Standard 2 Aug. 3/5 [He] had a telescoping rod in his hand. 1890 Nature 11 Sept. 473/1 The telescoping of the limbs and other organs within the body of an insect larva. Ibid., What may be termed the telescoping of ancestral stages one within another. 1898 Westm. Gaz. 3 June 3/2 The telescoped carriages and the injured men and women lying about. 1937 ‘M. Innes’ Hamlet, Revenge! i. ii. 42 Clay's picture of Pepys as Hamlet was..something extraordinary... He had..been examined both in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Pepys's Diaries. But this sudden telescoping was beyond him. 1951 M. McLuhan Mech. Bridge (1967) 85/2 The very name ‘Wurlitzer’, with its telescoping of ‘waltz’ and ‘whirl’, conveys the idea of vertigo. 1958 Listener 20 Feb. 341 The way in which this telescoping of development and recapitulation is achieved represents the greatest single master-stroke in the work. 1979 Internat. Jrnl. Sociol. of Law Feb. 123 Then there is the problem of what has curiously become known as ‘telescoping’—the uncertainty and inaccuracy of respondents in identifying precisely the date on which a particular incident took place—which will inflate or deflate the researcher's estimates. |